Will the Greens leave government without any political reform being achieved?

[Delusional or careerist?]

The last 2 years would be rendered fairly pointless if this is so. The only political reform they have achieved is a cap on spending in local elections.

Their priorities in my view should be:
1. Reducing the size of the dail to about 120.
2. Increasing the size of the constituencies.
3. Ban civil servants from responding to TDs reps on medical cards, social welfare appeals and planning applications.
4. Give Standards in Public Office power to initiate investigations. Give them full garda support/powers.
5. use senate to oversee all public appointments.
6. Ban corporate donations - they can't vote so why can view influence politics to reflect the views of their directors?
7. major major planning reform.
8. Give local authorities power to raise income from sustainable sources ie not development levies and car tax.

The legacy of these reforms would be far greater than the minor achievements to date. But will they see the bigger picture and extract concessions from the weakest FF leader ever?

[cunning_linguist]

The last 2 years would be rendered fairly pointless if this is so. The only political reform they have achieved is a cap on spending in local elections.

Their priorities in my view should be:
1. Reducing the size of the dail to about 120.
2. Increasing the size of the constituencies.
3. Ban civil servants from responding to TDs reps on medical cards, social welfare appeals and planning applications.
4. Give Standards in Public Office power to initiate investigations. Give them full garda support/powers.
5. use senate to oversee all public appointments.
6. Ban corporate donations - they can't vote so why can view influence politics to reflect the views of their directors?
7. major major planning reform.
8. Give local authorities power to raise income from sustainable sources ie not development levies and car tax.

The legacy of these reforms would be far greater than the minor achievements to date. But will they see the bigger picture and extract concessions from the weakest FF leader ever?

The Greens will end up as the new PDs if they continue in this coalition. I'm not a supporter of theirs, but its clear that the FF strategy for the GP is the same for the PDs - Implement the policies that FF actually want, but dress them up as the GPs ideas. So we'll get a "Carbon tax" in the next budget, which will have more of a revenue focus, then environmental. We'll get new taxes on all sorts of stuff - cars, fuel, drinking. We'll be told that this all down to the GP, Gormely will take the credit for all this "change". FF will sit back and wait. The PDs were linked to the worst excesses of the boom years - the greed, vulgar displays of wealth, a coarsening in how we treat each other, and Michael McDowell was allowed claim as much. In the end it worked - none of it was blamed on FF in the last election. In last weeks Irish Times it was reported that the Greens have been instrumental from the start in developing NAMA. What are the chances if it goes belly up, it will blamed as a Green idea, something FF went along with for the price of staying in Government.

As I said I'm not a GP supporter, have never voted for them and never would, but its clear that if they were in opposition their message would be flourishing.

[SKELLY]

the only thing the greens can achieve is bringing down this joke of as gov. if they do, i, as a voter will remember that, dont and theyll be as good as the pd's

[flakie]

The Greens need to stand for something. Even if they can't get their stuff to pass, they need to be seen to be pursuing issues that are ideologically their own.

So far, the Greens seem to be suffering from a fairly severe form of performance anxiety.

[drjimryan]

with the best of us freely admitting that this government wont last past summer 10 (and in the main, believing earlier), unless they can get legislation thru quickly, the answer to your posts question must be yes.....

Increasingly indeed, it is blatantly obvious that ff td's are already on election footing.....hoarding of print and envelopes being the obvious ones, and more subtle being the type of publicity being sought....

oconnor and lenihan in dsw and kennedy and obrien in dn being fine examples of two ff td's in one constituency who know full well that holding the 2 seats will be impossible and thus a game of political tennis is fully underway.....todays IT being a fine example....and the dn traingate affair being another..........

for the record, I predict oconnor for dsw and no seat held in dn (on a bad day for ff)......if the fortunes (and polls) keep rising Kennedy will take a seat in dn with obrein left out....

[Delusional or careerist?]

the only thing the greens can achieve is bringing down this joke of as gov. if they do, i, as a voter will remember that, dont and theyll be as good as the pd's

But if the Green Party could achive any/some/all of the above, would it not be worthwhile for them to hang on? (The end of Cowen/Nama may be a good thing of itself, but will replacing him with Enda Kenny and having the political system with the rules really change things in the real world?)

[Delusional or careerist?]

There are rumours Gormley is pushing for a list based system to replace pr stv. This would be great if it has an open list system and retains some geographic element for half the 140 seats (reduced by 26). Two major problems, ff backbenchers and the mucksavage electorate who would have to approve it. This would be worth staying for.

[Eamonn76]

Political interference in the Gardai needs to be ended. We need US style anti-corruption investigation mechanisms. That at least would be some Green legacy. Make it a condition of a deal with Labour and FG.

[Delusional or careerist?]

The talks have begun. Even getting FF agreement to reform will be tricky but if they do then it will be very worthwhile (smoke 'em John boy)

FF and Greens to begin talks on new Programme for Government | BreakingNews.ie

[Eamonn76]

FF agreed to ethics legislation when in government with Labour. Since then we have had the biggest incidence of corruption in Western (and Eastern?) European history - the property/banking/FF PDs €70 000 000 000 fraud. FF will agree to real enforced anti-corruption legislation? No they won't - they might as well all drive straight to Mountjoy.